


Returning Into Her Arms

by LORBEERPRINZ



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Soren haunted by the ghost of his past, it's almost a series at this point lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:41:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21646210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LORBEERPRINZ/pseuds/LORBEERPRINZ
Summary: On a particularly stormy night, Ike and Soren, travelling Tellius at their own pace, seek shelter from the rain in a sacred house. As it turns out, it is a place the wind mage is very familiar with.
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

It hadn’t even been half an hour since Ike and Soren had left a small village on their travels behind them when it had started to rain. Normally that wouldn’t be so bad, neither of them really minded rain that much, a little downpour could be quite refreshing during a long day of wandering. In fact, when the rain had started the two men had just shrugged and ignored it. They noticed it becoming stronger the longer they walked, but it hadn’t been anything too bad.  
Until now, that was.

In a surprisingly short amount of time, what had once been harmless rain had begun to develop into a full-blown storm. Thunder rolled in the distance, seemed to come closer by the minute. The rain came down in torrents, the wind was picking up.  
Ike and Soren had retreated under a random tree at the side of the road and stared at the storm unfolding before them. Their capes would only hold back so much rain, and as it seemed it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, the two of them looked at the sky in search for a chance of the weather clearing up. But the clouds were so dark it almost seemed like it was night.  
“Looks like we’ll be here for a while”, Ike commented drily.  
“We could hurry back to the village, but with how strong the rain is right now, I suppose it would be pretty useless.”  
As Ike peeked up into the sky again, it lit up between the mountains of pitch black clouds, thunder rolling by just a moment later. This peculiar weather always reminded him of Soren’s and other people’s magic a little. After all, wind and thunder were at these mages’ free disposal. It was no wonder Soren never seemed very concerned about the weather when he didn’t have to take it into account for his battle plans.  
But the days of leading an army were over.

A loud crackling sound pulled Ike out of his thoughts. At the same time, the surroundings lit up for an instant, the noise so loud it almost hurt his ears. Just a second later, another sound followed, the very distinctive cracking of collapsing trees nearby.  
He and Soren looked at each other upon this spectacle.  
“This is just grand”, the mage sighed, “It doesn’t look like we should actually stay here, either.”  
Ike nodded in agreement and begun looking around for maybe a way back into the village without getting soaked to their bones. Trekking through the forest to their back was too dangerous, but everything else around them was just open fields.  
Maybe there was no other choice but to take the rain. It was certainly better than getting struck by lightning.  
Ike’s eyes fell onto a small, barely visible pathway off the main road that travelled along the edge of the forest. It didn’t seem to be very long, as he could also see a few tiny lights through the storm, breaking the darkness ever so slightly. It was impossible to see whether this was a farming house or something else entirely, but it was surely inhabited and much closer than the village.  
It might be a chance to find shelter without getting too wet.

As the two hurried along, thunder around them, it became clearer to Ike with each step what kind of building they were heading towards. In the darkness, the outlines of a small church became visible with each step towards it.  
Finally, they reached the building, already appreciating the bit of shelter the stony arc of the door provided. Lights fell onto the muddy ground around them, surely there somebody was inside.  
The mercenary shot Soren a glance and found that his friend seemed less relieved about this chance for refuge than he had expected. In fact, the mage rubbed his arms, eyes darting around the shadows.  
“Maybe”, Soren whispered, “we should go back to the village after all…”  
“Come on”, Ike argued, “it’s a church. I’m sure they’ll grant us shelter for a while until the storm has passed.”  
The mage sighed, continued to rub his arms for a moment until he gave in and pushed himself against the wooden door.

Inside, the two found a small, yet warm and inviting interior made of several rows of wooden banks and a rather tiny altar at the far back of the room. To their left and right, statues adorned the walls, candles around them. Together with the ones on the altar, they illuminated the room surprisingly well and filled it with the familiar smell of hot wax. Ike’s personal experiences with the church mostly contained of fighting Begnion fanatists and the enraged goddess they had followed, and even before that religion had never played much of a role in his life, but he felt this place was rather charming in its own right.   
Soren, meanwhile, was lifting one hand towards his head, but stopped halfway through, fingers curling into a fist for a moment until it dropped to his side again. He looked at Ike briefly, crossed his arms, eyes beginning to dart around. In the end, he sighed and shook his head lightly, as if silently arguing with himself.

They begun walking down the aisle to one side. A few people were strewn around the wooden benches, probably waiting out the storm like the two of them did. Some seemed to be lost in thoughts or prayer while others threw them an eye of suspicion.   
Ike didn’t mind that, it made sense. They were strangers, after all.  
Soren stopped in front of the wooden statue that was meant to depict goddess Ashera. It was moderately detailed, a nice display of woodcarving talent. Even if it looked nothing like the towering, almost ethereal figure Ike and his comrades had fought, the solemn face and long veil above her head were surely something Ike could see people trusting in.  
Even though so much of it was wrong.  
In the light of the many tiny candles set up in front of the statue, Soren stared at the wooden face, its towering figure casting shadows across the mage. Between this and the fact that Soren was still wearing his hood, Ike couldn’t really make out his friend’s expression, but he did see how he began rubbing his bicepses briefly. It wasn’t even that cold in front of all these candles.

“Soren?”  
The mage flew around, pulled out of the depths of his own mind, looked at Ike in confusion for a moment. He settled quickly after a short back and forth between the statue and the mercenary.  
“Sorry”, he said, “I just thought I’ve been–”

“Excuse me, gentlemen.”

The figure of a slightly elderly man appeared before the two, wrapped into the humble threats of a monk. Soren shuffled a little, but the man had his eyes firmly set on Ike, maybe believing the two of them to be master and student. It wouldn’t be the first time.  
The monk raised one hand towards his face so that the side of his hand faced the visitors as he bowed ever so slightly.  
“Sorry to disturb you”, Ike began, “we’re just seeking some shelter from the storm for a while.”  
The monk nodded understandingly, began to scan the pair from top to bottom for a moment. He cleared his throat.  
“Please excuse me, it’s quite rare to see strangers in these corners of the land. Usually, the only visitors come from the nearby village, travellers are extremely seldom here. I have to make sure the members of our community are save, you know. Things have sure… changed as of late, haven’t they...”  
He studied the two for another moment, wrinkles forming on his forehead, until he politely asked them to follow him.  
The three men entered a small back room through an unassuming wooden door at the far end of the church, which Ike suspected was an office of sorts. It housed mountains of books, a heavy desk, a few chairs, a cupboard, many office-like things. On the wall a few pieces of white clothing could be seen hanging, long, flowing robes that were at the very least a little more decorated than the monk’s current plain clothes and gave the impression of a bishop’s robes.  
The clergyman sat down behind his desk, looked at his two guests in silence. 

Ike felt the man’s deep stares, but was unsure what he was trying to find out. In the background, the rain kept humming as the storm rattled a door somewhere.  
“Look”, the monk began, “we are happy to house anyone in peril and the weather outside right now surely is… quite the predicament for anyone caught in it. As long as you don’t disturb the prayers of anyone around, feel free to stay for as long as you desire. In fact, I – we – would welcome it if you joined in with us in praying the storm will pass soon and not cause too much damage.”  
Ike wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of faking piety just to stay dry for a while, but before he could even say anything about it, Soren began to sigh, pushing himself into his wooden chair.  
“I think it’s better if we leave after all, Ike. If we hurry, we can make it back to the village…”

The bishop raised an eyebrow, stared at the two for a moment once more as Ike began to contemplate this proposal. He knew Soren especially was not very keen on religion, had noticed his hesitation to enter this church earlier, and after all they had been through in the past, fighting a literal goddess and her crazed, scheming followers, it was hard to blame him.  
“...hm…?”  
The elderly man approached the two, more specifically Soren, who in turn reacted by pulling his hood a little deeper into his face, ready to leave.   
Before he could actually get up, however, the monk swiftly reached for him and managed to pull away the hood, earning a deathly gaze from the mage. He seemed frozen in his entirety for a second, until he took a sharp breath, backing up until he hit the desk behind him. One hand went up to his own forehead, moved down after that in what looked like a crossing motion. Soren hissed briefly, glared at the man as they both seemingly tried to collect themselves and Ike was unsuccessful in assessing what exactly was going on.

“ _You_!”

Small drops of sweat began to form on the monk’s forehead as he stared at the mage in sheer horror. For a moment Ike thought this was a similar, yet greatly exaggerated reaction as the ones he had seen quite a few times from people after they had realized that Soren was not a spirit charmer. He hated that it was still this way.  
But this was a little too extreme, wasn’t it? This man looked like he had seen a horrifying monster.  
Soren, meanwhile, had retreated into his own mind, it appeared, pulled the hood back over his head, as if he was trying to disappear. Almost as if he was ashamed.

“Wait”, Ike began as he had decided neither man’s reaction was normal, “what is even going on here?”

He was at first confronted with a wall of silence while the rain and storm outside kept raging in the distance. The wind howled through the cracks and gaps around them. Soren sighed, yet again, and whispered from under his hood. He hadn’t really started to speak as the monk shook his head, hissed almost inaudibly for just a moment before he collected himself and stared down at the boy in front of him.

“Maybe you remember that I lived in a church for a certain period in my life. I couldn’t make it out earlier, it was too dark, too much has changed in the village, but… this is the place. I’m sorry, Ike, I should have told you earlier.”

“So it really is you”, the priest sighed, almost groaned, “for a moment I thought I was mistaken. But there is no doubt, is there?” He looked at Ike.   
“It is true, my brothers and I picked this child up from the streets when he was about to die. It has been such a long time since then, I was much younger, but I remember it vividly. A little boy at the brink of death, too weak to speak or move, body covered in fresh wounds. We thought he’d die right under our hands.  
But we managed to save his life, we gave him shelter, food, everything. It was obvious he didn’t have a lot of experience with much of anything, he couldn’t even speak, however that happened. I remember how I had been assigned to cut his hair and he was so scared of the pair of scissors in my hand, kicked and screamed and growled at me like some animal. We had to keep him under control with three people to at least brush his hair and wash his face, and I think he bit at least one of us. It was… quite the sight. We provided clothes for him and were almost ready to let him be on his way again after his body had healed, but our abbot back then – maybe you remember him, Soren, father Nekoda – noticed his talents with reading and writing, how casually he used magic. He found it was a shame to let go of such a bright child and so we were tasked to keep him here and teach him, and in exchange he would assist us in our daily tasks.  
After some time, when he had learned to speak and behave like a normal human being, we parted ways and he never returned.”

“...and I had never intended to do so”, Soren sighed. 

The bishop’s gaze shifted from Ike towards the mage, his eyes seemed to narrow just a little.  
“So you’re not grateful for what we did for you at all”, he concluded. No, it was more of an accusation he had no real reason to make, from what Ike could tell. But Soren’s silence on the matter showed that he had no interest in either admitting to it or defending himself.  
It seemed strange to Ike at first, normally his friend was quick to bring an argument to the table, had fitting words for almost every situation. Except when it was about himself. He tended to be unusually silent when Soren himself was the topic of discussion, almost as if in such moments, he returned to his young, speechless self that could do nothing but let accusations and abuse rain down on him. Days where staying silent had meant more chances for survival.  
Ike couldn’t help but wonder whether it had been similar during Soren’s time with these monks.

“Tsk!”  
The elderly man’s gaze slowly turned into a glare, which Soren appeared to return.  
“After all we did for you… We risked so much taking you in despite your... _nature..._ and you come crawling back here without a single bit of gratefulness! Just keep staring at me with those devilish eyes of yours! Unbelievable… For a moment I thought we were finally being granted a recompense for enduring this test she had put upon us. I suppose we should have never expected anything from a creature like you.”

Soren stiffened on his chair for a second before his hands curled into fists and he leaned forward a little, the movement being just enough to make his hood slide off and expose his head once more. His glare seemed even more deadly than that of the man he was facing.  
“You knew it?!”

The bishop sighed.

“So you do as well by now. I guess it was to be expected sooner or later. But…” His eyes fell onto Ike once again. “Are you sure you want to expose this to your companion over here…?”  
You were the one talking about it in the first place, was all Ike could think as he shot the man a glance that hopefully made him understand he knew. There was no need for a great amount of words repeating over and over again that he was aware of it and didn’t mind. Soren knew them very well, and Ike knew he appreciated his support. They had been over this so often.

“Anyway”, the monk continued when no direct answer came from Ike, “we didn’t know about it right from the beginning. You seemed like a mere spirit charmer, albeit a shockingly young one. But father Nekoda, he was the one who realized it after a while. And yet, he wanted to keep you. We were chosen by the goddess, he thought, saw you as her testing us to be worthy of her blessings. We sacrificed so much for you!”

“And you let me read and recite those doctrines over and over again. You provided a roof over my head yet taught me that I don’t belong into this world. You knew who I was and told me I have no right to exist.”  
Soren’s fists began trembling ever so slightly. Ike put a hand on his shoulder that the mage brushed off immediately, sharp eyes locked with his former life saver. His words were little more than a whisper, but one full of poison, similar to the bishop’s tone earlier. After a small pause, his lips twisted into a bitter, almost mocking smile.  
“And in the end, guess what? Your amazing goddess doesn’t even care. All your efforts were in vain.”

He wasn’t wrong, Ike thought. Neither the goddess these people were praying to nor her other half Yune had even known people of mixed heritage like Soren existed until just a few months ago. And while Ashera had found herself judging over mankind’s combined actions, the mercenary doubted she would care about what one small group of priests did. 

“...I suspected that already”, the priest sighed. His hands appeared to tug at the fabric of his crossed sleeves as he went on.  
“Even though we risked so much… Do you even know how much we sacrificed because of you? We had to isolate ourselves and our community! Imagine what would have happened if someone had found out we housed a little half-blooded bastard! Every single day we lived in fear of exposure! And yet we kept you around, fed you, educated you. You would be nothing more but a wretched half-human beast without us! A mere animal! Father Nekoda had so much hope for you and you just turned your back on us, never to return, never to show gratitude. You little…”

“Hey now.”  
Ike reached for the bishop, who had begun to lean forward, closer and closer towards Soren. The mage, meanwhile, kept both his glare and his position on the chair. His body seemed entirely stiff, but Ike thought he could see a little tremble here or there. Not out of fear, he was sure, but from anger.  
“I think the people outside can already hear you.”  
The man shoved Ike’s hand away from him, hissed once again.  
“How dare you intervene, this has nothing to do with you. You have no idea what we’ve been through because of this bastard child! This… _thing_ would be nothing without us, dead and rotten away long ago. The goddess won’t even take those, yet we did! We gave him a name, speech, everything, his entire identity is ours! He has no right to treat this place and us in such disrespectful fashion!”

The bishop tried pushing himself forward, past Ike, as Soren rose from his chair, knocking it over in the process. The man growled, but Ike stepped between him and the mage. This was one advantage of someone his size and stature. Not everything had to be resolved with violence, sometimes just the presence of someone obviously taller and more muscular than a potential aggressor could be enough to calm the situation. Many people might be quick trying to pick on the weaker, but were too cowardly to go through with their threats when presented with someone who could pose an actual challenge. If that didn’t help, slowly reaching for the sword on his back would often do the trick. Ike wasn’t keen on making people fear him, but it was surely better than outright violence.  
He was confident Soren could defend himself, of course, knew of the concealed knife his friend carried on himself at all times, trusted in his magic abilities. But this was not the time for fights, especially not when the opponent was a mere priest.  
He glared down at said priest, crossed his muscular arms. The man tried a last time getting around Ike, which the mercenary easily prevented by a simple step to the left or right, until he gave up with a growl. Hopefully, he would calm down a little.

“Let’s go”, Ike said to the mage, who silently agreed and the two of them left before the situation could escalate any further. As almost expected, the priest hurried after then but stopped himself in the door between his office and the main room of the church. The veins on his pale, thin neck pulsated visibly.   
At this point, all eyes inside the building were fixed on the three men, and it seemed like this absolute attention was what kept the bishop from continuing to hurl insults at Ike’s friend.   
Soren looked back at him one last time before hurrying out of the church.

It turned out the rain had died down just a little bit, the worst of the thunderstorm had passed. But it was still very windy, blowing the last remnants of the rain into their faces as Ike and Soren made their way back to the village and spent the rest of the evening and night in the first inn they had found.


	2. Chapter 2

To Soren’s relief, it was easier to convince Ike that everything was alright than he had thought. After all, the encounter in the church had been a highly emotional experience for all three of the participants and Soren could tell it had left a lasting impression on Ike.  
For the rest of the evening that they spent trying to dry and warm up in a small room in the first inn they had found in the nearby village, the mercenary had looked at Soren as if wanting to say something, but hesitated to do so over and over again. But the mage could see his friend’s concern, knew how to tell this kind of stare apart from his other ways of looking at people. He easily noticed the tiny wrinkles on his forehead just under the headband, the small movements of his eyebrows.  
“I’m fine, Ike”, Soren finally said after a long, awkwardly silent evening. He tried to underline his statement with a smile. 

“I see. I guess I simply didn’t expect it to… go out of hand that much.”  
“He was just like anyone else”, Soren replied, “let’s forget about it.”

What the mage did not admit was that he did have a few questions, though. If this priest and his comrades had indeed realized Soren was one of the Branded at some point, would thinking it to be a divine test really be enough of a motivation to keep him around? He wouldn’t be surprised, though, if these men had deliberately given him access to literature unrelated to their teachings, fully expecting that he would one day find out on his own what he was. Maybe they had gotten some sort of twisted satisfaction out of believing they had not needed to take care of Soren if they had not wanted to, that his life had been entirely at their mercy for that period of time.  
And if they had been exposed, would they just have killed him? It was possible, Soren found, they had only kept him for their own gains, after all. It was almost weirdly satisfying to remember that the reward they had hoped for had never come and instead, only Soren himself had gained something from being kept alive in relative, superficial safety and having learned to talk.  
Even though in reality, anyone could have done any of that.

Ike gave him a little affirmative pat on the back before preparing to go to sleep. Soren followed shortly after him, although he found it hard to find any rest. The thunderstorm seemed to have returned, although not as forcefully as before. But the earlier encounter with the priest would not leave his mind, the emotions and questions it had brought along bothered the mage more than he wanted to admit to himself.  
In the end, he was unable to sleep at all.

Both of them were up at daybreak the next morning, a fact Soren welcomed quite a lot. The earlier they were on their way again, out of this area and the memories it had brought to the surface, the better.   
The weather hadn’t changed all that much, although it was impossible to tell whether it was still the same thunderstorm or another one had taken its place. But whatever the case, it was much friendlier than the one on the previous day, letting the two travellers be on their way without much fear of getting soaked immediately or being struck by lightning, as it seemed to be moving away from them after having stayed in the area all night.  
And it allowed them to slip out of the village without much of a fuss, something that Soren greatly appreciated since the previous day’s events, which had left this small, underlying nagging at the back of his mind that someone of the older generation around the village might be able to recognize him, remember him from “back then”. And he surely didn’t need another repetition of what had happened in that church.

Luckily, the rain now was not remotely as disruptive as last night, and Soren even found himself enjoying the cool shower and fresh air. A few birds sung from under their leavy roofs in the trees, underlining the peaceful morning atmosphere.  
And yet, the mage couldn’t help but shoot the small pathway to the church a glance as they passed it, subconsciously checking if nobody who had witnessed last night’s scene – or worse even, the monk himself – was coming their way.  
It wasn’t the case, but there was something else that seemed weird. The sky over where the church would be, hidden behind a few stray trees, was unusually dark even in this cloudy, rainy weather. Those black clouds were moving, differently from the others that were bringing rain.  
Smoke.

Ike stepped forward, stared at the fumes in the distance. Soren didn’t need to exchange any words with him to know that they both were thinking the same thing. But unlike Soren, who was ready to leave this area behind and whatever was going on to itself, the blue-haired had a different idea.  
“Let’s check it out”, he said to the mage and, before the latter could even reply, was already on the narrow road down towards the church, leaving Soren with no choice but to follow.  
Approaching the building in daylight, no matter how cloudy it was, definitely made it more obvious to Soren that this was the place he had spent part of his adolescence at. He hadn’t seen these surroundings quite a lot, his ventures into the village had been rather few. The monks had often subtly discouraged him from going, and he finally understood why.

It became clear very quickly that the two men’s fear was true, the church was engulfed in flames.  
A raging wall of fire stood before them, roaring hot tongues dancing around the brickwork. Luckily, the surrounding trees were far away enough to not having caught fire yet, but it might only be a matter of time. Black smoke rose high into the sky and yet, the villagers appeared to not have noticed any danger yet. It was too early in the day, it seemed.  
Ike and Soren stared at the flames in horror, the mage’s mind racing to analyze the situation.

“There are more roofbeams than on regular houses to support the bell”, he explained, “if the roof was still leakproof they were mostly dry. Perfect fodder when lightning strikes.”  
He didn’t have to tell Ike that the altar room’s furnishing and humble decorations were wooden too, he had seen them the night before. The entire building had turned into one giant pyre.  
Or maybe a stake.  
Like the ones Soren had read about during his time here, manifestos that had set examples on what to do with his kind. Flames of punishment.

Whose punishment was this, exactly?

“Do you think there’s anyone in the building?”

Soren hesitated to answer for a moment as the flames continued to hold a strange fascination. He had looked upon this rather humble church so many times, had grown to dread its silhouette alone after understanding it didn’t actually welcome him at all.   
Now that silhouette was swallowed by fire, bit by bit, giving the building an entirely new form that seemed to fit it so much better. 

“Soren?”

He finally caught himself as he had begun to feel a strange bout of vertigo looking upon these hot tongues. He blinked rapidly, trying to calm down his dried out eyes, saw Ike’s serious glance at him, noticed his impatience.  
“It’s… possible”, the mage swallowed, “usually, there is at least one of them in the church at any time. For emergencies, they said.”

“Well, this is certainly an emergency”, Ike growled. He looked around, trying to see if people had already fled to safety. When he couldn’t find anyone, the mercenary cursed and threw his bag to the side. He removed his headband to wrap it around his nose and mouth instead.  
Soren stared at the scene in disbelief, no matter how much sense it made for someone like Ike to do this, the mage’s arm twitched to hold him back.   
Soren didn’t want him to go. He had no need to risk his life for others anymore. This was none of their business.  
“See if you can find anyone around, if someone’s injured or even able to help. I’ll search inside.”

There was a pause between the two, filled only with the cracklings of the burning church.  
Ike squeezed his friend’s shoulder.  
“I’ll make it quick, I promise.”

Before Soren could even protest, Ike rushed towards the building, threw one of the surprisingly undamaged doors open and disappeared inside. The mage looked after him for a moment, debating whether he should follow him, until he remembered Ike’s command.   
He seldomly did, but in this moment Soren hated Ike’s precise and logical orders. He wanted to follow him, protect him as much as possible. The mage had so much more experience withstanding flames and other elements through his profession. Ike would be able to cope with a house fire just as well as with an attack from a fire mage, namely not great. It pained Soren to leave Ike to himself in this situation, but he was right. The monks might need help, and he knew very well Ike would never forgive himself if someone died he could have saved.   
The wind sage’s knowledge of the surroundings were a great advantage, as he was able to swiftly scan the area, check the darkest corners and possible escape routes while the fire kept roaring in the background. It was almost like he had returned to war.

He couldn’t find anyone, however, at least outside. But there was still the neighboring house where the monks lived, where he had lived in, that luckily had not been affected by the fire yet. Hopefully, Soren thought, some of the priests were still resting, as unusual that seemed, and could help keeping the fire under control.  
No time for formalities, Soren barged into the house and as he couldn’t see anyone in the main room immediately, he headed for the bedrooms. Two people shared a small room each, except for Soren, who used to have a room for himself at the very back of the corridor. Not because he had been the youngest and even injured for a while, he was sure now.  
They had never wanted to be in the same room as him.  
But no matter how many bedrooms Soren checked, he could not find anyone. The pantry, the outhouse, everything was empty. Could all of them be inside the burning church? Soren found that strange from how he remembered his everyday life with this community. And more importantly, it would make Ike’s rescue mission a lot harder. 

Taking a moment to clear his head full of rushed thoughts, the mage noticed something. He returned to the main room to see if it had not just been a mistake, but it turned out to be true. 

There was only one plate and cup on the table.  
Similarly, only one bed had sheets on them. He hadn’t even realized it while frantically looking for someone to help out or warn.

Now sure he would not find anyone in this place, Soren returned outside to look for Ike.  
He, too, was nowhere to be seen.  
Meaning he still had to be inside the burning church.  
Soren’s eyes flew around, maybe he was wrong and Ike had already come out of the building, and the longer he went without seeing Ike – or anyone, for that matter – the more his heart and mind began to race. The outside heat generated by the fire was joined by a different, completely unpleasant heat inside his body, creeping along his spine and into his skull. It made his skin itch.

Ike was still somewhere in there.

With a deafening, thunderous roar, the church’s roof collapsed on one side, crushing part of the inside of the altar room.

_Ike was still somewhere in there_.

With weak knees Soren charged at the building to make his way inside.  
A wall of heat greater than he had ever experienced immediately pushed him back upon entering the church, almost as if it was trying to keep from going in deeper. Hot air filled his lungs, every breath he took felt like he was burning from the inside. He took a silken belt of his and tied it around his face, and a second one when he quickly noticed it wasn’t enough.  
The fire’s booming rush drowned out everything around him, flames were so bright he could hardly see. With every second the mage spent inside the flaming altar room, it became harder for him to keep his eyes open, they burned from the smoke.  
But he had to find Ike.

It was almost impossible to find his way through the half-crumbled church, flames and rubbish all around made it hard to rely on memory and instincts. Everywhere Soren went was fire, the wooden furniture burning even better and brighter than he might have expected. He knew it was useless to rely on magic, his winds would make no difference other than fanning the flames even further. If this was war, he would surely be able to use the situation to his advantage, fling literal winds of fire at his opponents.  
But this wasn’t war.  
It was an entirely different fight for survival.

He carefully tried to move forward through the inferno, yet Ike was still nowhere in sight.   
What if he had been crushed under the collapsing rooftop?  
What if Ike was somewhere inside this burning mountain of wood and stone and slate, still alive and slowly succumbing to the smoke and flames?  
Despite the fire all around him, cold sweat broke out on Soren’s skin, crawled up and down his back. He was frozen in place.

_Ike was still somewhere in here_.

Another loud crackling noise brought the mage out of his rigour, it was alarmingly close.  
Right behind him, in fact.

Soren turned and looked up to find the wooden goddess statue slowly bending over as the fire was eating away at its base. The head had also broken into flames already, the gently carved, solemn face looking more demonic than anything as the hot tongues danced around it.   
The towering figure came down as if trying to reach for the branded mage, heating up the immediate surroundings even more. 

“Soren!!”

A sudden blow to his side made the mage fly to his right, just as Ashera’s stature crashed down on the floor. The stones on the ground were incredibly hot to the touch, Soren thought his palms were being burnt just from touching it shortly.  
He looked up, saw Ike behind the pile of wooden leftovers of the statue, a leg still raised from his unusual yet highly efficient way of saving his friend from the imminent danger. Something was draped over his shoulder, wrapped in his cape.  
A body.

“What are you doing here?!”, Ike shouted at him, voice muffled by the headband over his mouth. He was hard to hear over the roars and crackles of the flames.  
“You weren’t coming back!”, Soren yelled back, which immediately made his lungs hurt. He coughed. The room was filled with so much smoke even the huge hole in the roof made hardly any difference. They were engulfed by flames, smoke, soot, it was almost impossible to see or hear anything.  
The mage tried to approach Ike, they had to stay together now. He wouldn’t lose his sight of the mercenary again.

“We need to get ou–”

Before Soren could even finish his sentence, the rest of the roof crashed down in another ear-splitting blast. The flaming beams of wood and stone destroyed everything in their path, whirled up so much pitch-black soot it was impossible to see anything at all for a moment. Even when it began to settle a few seconds later, leaving Soren, Ike and the latter’s human baggage covered in hot ashes, visibility was reduced so much by the dust and smoky clouds in the air that the walls of the church has basically disappeared.  
Worst of all, though, was that this new collapse had thrown all its barrage in front of the doors, blocking their best way to escape.

“What now?”, Ike shouted over the raging fire.  
Soren’s mind raced, even without being able to see much he should be able to find at least a general direction the two might retreat to in hopes of getting out of this infernal nightmare. He looked behind them, one side lined by the church’s brick walls that luckily were still standing proudly.  
For now, at least.  
He couldn’t see much, but remembered the layout of the place.

“There’s a door leading outside from the back room!”

It was impossible to promise it wasn’t blocked by something as well, but it was the only chance they had in this situation. Ike lead the way while carrying what Soren assumed was the limp body of the monk whose name he couldn’t even remember despite their intense confrontation the night before. The mage took helping him secure the man on Ike’s back as an opportunity to stay as close to him as possible, slightly pushed him forward.  
They had to hurry and finally get out of here.

The back room was luckily not as affected by the flames yet as the main part of the church, though it was absolutely filled with smoke. A few small fires here and there seemed to have broken out from the sheer heat alone, they had to be quick to leave before these flames joined with the rest of them to form one giant, deadly pyre.  
Ike kicked at the door, but it wouldn’t open.  
“What the hell?”  
Soren stepped forward, assumed the door was either stuck or locked with a key. Whatever it was, it didn’t bulge to physical force alone, the old metal being more sturdy than he had expected.  
Swiftly, the mage drew out his knife and jammed it between the strike plate and doorframe, hacked at it again and again until the bolt finally gave in and he could easily push down the sizzling hot handle and flee outside.

The two men collapsed onto the muddy ground when they were at a safe distance from the fire, heavily coughing as their bodies tried to rid their lungs of the smoke and ashes and refill them with fresh air. The small drizzle from the clouds felt soothingly cool.   
When they had recovered a little, flames still raging in their back, Ike carefully let go of the bundle on his shoulders. As Soren had expected, unwrapping the cape unveiled the unconscious body of the elderly monk. He was still alive, the mage could see the man’s very faint movements of his chest.  
The old man too began to spat out rattling coughs and no matter how deeply he inhaled, more and more coughs followed. Small drops of blood periodically flew out of his mouth as well.

“You can heal him, right?”  
Ike looked at Soren, whose legs were frozen in place. He had not expected to see the man who just last night had so energetically hurled insults at him to lay limply in Ike’s arms. He had seen many a soldier that had been more dead than alive and it was always an unpleasant sight, but something was different here.  
Soldiers, at least those that had fought on their side, were often worth keeping alive, the more manpower in a battle, the better. But this old man had no worth to anyone, he had just brought back memories Soren had spent years trying to forget.  
Why should he be allowed to live on when he had never wanted Soren to exist in the first place?

“Soren?”  
As he looked at Ike again, the mage noticed how the old priest managed to open his eyes, they rolled around for a little until setting on his former fosterling. Slowly, he tried to lift a weak, trembling arm, one finger half pointing at Soren as small bits of burnt skin hung from it.  
“Demon…”, he breathed almost inaudibly, “it was… you… I should have never… let you insi– ”  
More coughs.  
“Soren!!”

Ike’s voice let the mage snap out of his renewed rigour, even though it took him another moment of staring at the weakened man in front of him until his legs finally moved. His and Ike’s bags were still where they had left him at the beginning of his whole event, meaning Soren had to run all around the burning church to retrieve the healing staff he had with him for emergencies.   
He hesitated a little as he picked it up, wondering why he should waste it on the old priest in the first place. But Ike might never forgive him if he didn’t.  
Legs still itching and hurting from his time inside the burning church, he hurried back to Ike’s side as the building next to him continued to crumble.  
He waved the staff over the monk, let his magic be amplified by the crystal making for its core. But he found it hard to concentrate, even on the most gruesome battlefields during the wars he had been through had not given him that much trouble. He moved the staff closer to his patient, hoping it would help the magic flow just a little, but the monk raised his hand again, trying to bush the staff away from his face. He was too weak to do it, however, though the intend was clear.

In the end, his hand just rested against the cool metal of the staff’s handle and finally slid off as the old man closed his eyes again and his breath rattled one last time.

Soren clutched his staff as silence fell over the scene, only broken by the ever-present rushing of the fire in the background.

What would Ike think of him now?

The mercenary shook his head, brooded over the lifeless body in his arms for just a moment until he looked at Soren again. The mage was ready to hear him asking why he had hesitated for so long, would not have been surprised to hear Ike voice frustration that they had been unable to save him.  
It was unfortunate, in a way. Ike had risked his own life trying to rescue this guy, and yet it had been in vain.  
But instead of blaming Soren or himself or anyone else, Ike just cleared his throat.  
“What now?”

In the growing rain, Soren led Ike and the priest in his arms through the small area and behind the house he had once used to live in. As he had expected, the small cemetery he remembered from those days was still there, though it seemed it had gained in inhabitants.  
They walked along the graves until the very back of it, Soren realizing that he could indeed see a few familiar names he had not remembered until now. One of them read “Nekoda”.  
The two fetched shovels from a nearby shed and as the fires kept eating away at the church, went to work on digging out a grave for the last monk of this community. No matter how hard he tried, Soren just couldn’t remember the man’s name, though he did recall his face from the past. He had so almost from the start, age had seemingly not worn on him as much as one would have expected.  
Now, however, with his skin burnt and greying out, face sinking in as death settled in his body entirely, he appeared to suddenly have aged by at least a decade or two. 

When done with digging, the two men slowly let the priest down into his last resting place, looked at him and how the rain poured down on him one last time while resting on their shovels.  
It seemed Ike was feeling at least some bits of remorse about this loss, he was just that kind of person. It was small, but Soren could make out the small marks of regret on his face. Even though it definitely wasn’t his fault.  
Soren himself, meanwhile, was not sure what to feel. In fact, he felt nothing out of the ordinary, it wasn’t the first time he buried a dead person. It was an unfortunate, yet entirely common practice in war. And even in his younger years he had attended church-internal funerals on this very graveyard a few times as the oldest in this group of clergymen had passed on.  
Maybe he was relieved the monk was gone, all of them were gone, even the church was gone.

It was definitely over now.

“You okay?”, Ike asked him briefly and, as Soren simply nodded, begun filling the grave up with soil.  
In the back of Soren’s mind, memories of similar burials krept up as he shovelled dirt around with burning hands. The cool rain hardly soothed his hot skin.  
He remembered bits and pieces of the sermon that was commonly being recited during such events. When they closed the grave with a few last heaps of dirt, Soren’s lips almost automatically formed the words that made out the last bits of this sermon.

“... and thus will be returning into her arms…”

“Hm?”, Ike looked at his friend with puzzled eyes. Soren simply shook his head in response, but felt it would be better to maybe say something after all.  
“It’s fine. I simply… remembered something. But it’s over now, so… let’s go. There’s is nothing left we can do now.”  
Ike agreed and they simply left their shovels at the head of the monk’s final resting place as a makeshift gravestone, picked up their bags and looked at the burning church one last time. The building was way beyond help at this point and from afar, Soren could see that it appeared at least a few villagers had noticed what was going on. They were way too late, of course, and not even the rain that had picked up would make any difference.  
And the arrival of the villagers meant that they definitely had to go. Soren was absolutely not interested in being at the center of attention once again as some of the helpers might possibly remember him from last night, remember him all those years ago. There was a high chance it would turn into the same kind of commotion he had experienced so many times before, people realizing who – _what_ – he was and blaming him on whatever predicament they were finding themselves in. Famine, earthquakes, epidemics, he had heard it all. Were he able to actually call upon all these things, he would be a god of death.

They took a route through the forest and Soren looked back one last time, saw how more and more people gathered around the burning place.  
He felt Ike’s hand on his shoulder, his silent urge to walk on.  
Yes, it was time to finally go. Once they were far away enough, Soren would care for the wounds they had suffered from this event. As adrenaline subsided slowly, his side began to hurt, skin itching from the small burns. 

It was time to get going.

He took Ike’s hand and together they continued to make their way through the forest, as far away from this place as possible.

It was definitely over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, somehow I managed to finish thsi one much faster than I expected, haha. I'm still not happy about the title, but at least I managed to work it into the fic somehow, since it's something I really like doing. Obviously not *every* work needs a title drop, but I tend to do it from time to time, and since this one was rather random, I wanted to give it some more meaning. Although if you twist and turn it, you can find multiple meanings, I guess. Also, I know, nothing is gained from the event in the end, but that's life sometimes, and I suppose there is indeed nothing to be gained when someone is so deeply fixated on their opinions formed in the past. But this wasn't meant to be a fic to discuss this kind of topic, it was just something small I wanted to write (and am now overanalyzing myself haha). Next I might start with more Byleth/Linhardt during the holidays.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I guess after all the fics I wrote so far, it's really turning into some sort of Soren-related series haha. Though at the same time I don't think it would make sense to open an actual series for these. This one here in particular was started more on a whim than anything, although I was playing with the thought of writing it for a while, and I thought it's better to get it out of my system before returning to Linhardt/Byleth territory. Maybe one day I'll make it a collection/series for easier access to all my Soren-related works, I don't know yet. Not sure if this would even be something that's required, do people even read/enjoy them... ^^;  
> (also ps, I hate finding titles for my works)


End file.
